


to the wild and to the both of us

by phichit-chu (howtobottlefame)



Series: YOI drabbles [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 10:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9543761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howtobottlefame/pseuds/phichit-chu
Summary: It's no surprise Otabek can't forget him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely based on the red string of fate, a Chinese myth where the gods tie two people destined to be together or help each other with a red string that can knot and stretch but never breaks.

His mother had told him about it. She'd tuck him in bed and tell him about everyone's missing half, about the thread tying them together that would knot and tangle but never break. He'd hear it in other places, too. His classmates giggling and whispering and wondering who they were tied to. He knew the story well.

Otabek would kiss his mother goodnight and stay quiet about it. He wouldn't ask about his father's death or about her new husband. He wouldn't tell her about how he heard his teacher's wife had left him, or about the screams he heard from the neighbours at night. How could he believe in something that allowed that? That gave him every proof of the opposite? But his mother would smile in that hopeful way of hers and kiss his forehead, _you'll find yours too, honey_ , and he'd keep his thoughts to himself.

+

He meets him during the summer. All graceful limbs and unwavering eyes. He meets him but never really gets to know him. When he reaches the studio every morning, Yuri's already there, stretching in a way Otabek can only hope for. When he leaves in the afternoon, Yuri remains. He is ever present yet impossibly far away.

They rarely talk. He doesn't take it personal, there doesn't seem to be anyone in their group that can hold Yuri's attention for more than a few minutes and never about anything that's not ballet.

Yuri's all poised elegance and a steel gaze. When Yakov asks a different move of them, he's used as example. When Otabek has to sit for a moment, waiting the sting of a pulled muscle and a wounded pride to pass, he can feel Yuri's gaze on him: sharp, like salt to a wound. He meets his green eyes and finds it impossible to look away, the foreign thing he feels relentlessly tugging and tightening in his chest making it hard to breathe. When Yuri finally looks away, he tells himself that's not disappointment he feels.

He sits in bed at night, rubbing a soothing cream to his aching muscles, and he can hear his mother's voice as if she was right there with him. _It's a funny thing,_ she'd say, her eyes warm like a summer sky, _that you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. But you can feel it._ He'd think about his father, then. The memories he had of him weren't many but they were enough. Always gentle and always kind and the thought of his death was more than enough for him to forget his mother's words.

Russia is cold and unforgiving and when he finally leaves he doesn't look back, the feeling of not being good enough weighing heavily on his shoulders and the image of green, steady eyes a memory he can't quite shake off.

+

It's five years and Yuri Plisetsky has followed him everywhere. Halfway across the world and still a constant presence in his life. It's in the next ballet class he considers taking and decides against, in the skating magazine a little girl reads in the bus, the background noise of the junior competitions that play on the tv, and the memory follows him. He feels a tug in his chest and those eyes always come back to him.

Yuri Plisetsky, the ice tiger of Russia, a national pride and the skating world's most promising junior, and it's no surprise Otabek can't forget him. He doesn't think too much about it, doesn't listen to his mother's voice, coming to him every night before bed.

When he finds himself watching Yuri's routines on YouTube he tells himself it's only normal, that the odd beating of his heart means nothing, and doesn't think about those eyes, how they'd look in person if he were there.

It's five years and Yuri seems just as distant when he meets him again, yet still a presence hard to ignore. He sees him five years older, his green eyes just the same, and it's hard to look away. When he's caught looking and gets nothing but a cold reaction he simply shrugs it off, leaving him behind and forcing himself to not think about it.

+

He drives the streets of Barcelona almost aimlessly, not having so much a destiny as the desire to feel one of the comforts he knows best, the hum of the engine powerful between his thighs. He likes to think all that tamed energy the only reckless thing he allows himself.

It's the one day he has before the competition, before the last chance he has to prove himself, and while it remains like second nature to keep his routine ever present in his mind, he knows worrying about it won't be of any use now. He should take the time now that he has it to be alone, to get away from the other skaters and all they entail. Still, when he hears at least half a dozen different voices calling out a familiar name, like the beating of his heart, he thinks maybe the choice was never his to make.

+

Yuri remains just as he remembers and so much more. His eyes are still as unyielding as steel but impossibly warmer now. The smile is new. Unexpected. Otabek thinks how this is possibly the first time he's seen a genuine smile on him and he's sure he can hear his own heartbeat in his ears.

+

He has never been keen on parties, always avoiding mingling as much as he could when it was not demanded of him. It's no different here, with loss so heavy on his shoulders. But his coach still forces him into a suit entirely too uncomfortable and he finds a flute of champagne pressed into his hand before he's left by himself at the back of the ball room. It's not long before the air in the room feels too cramped for his liking, the music louder and the people drunker. He finds his relief in the open balcony, the cold night air feeling like a blessing on his skin after being in the recycled air of the party for too long.

The skyline is different than in Almaty but no less beautiful and he finds himself lost in thought as he watches the way the different buildings reach towards the sky. Alone with his thoughts it's no time before they turn sour, going over and over his defeat. Falling from second place to fourth, against JJ no less. The guy had managed to ruin every single thing about his short program and _still_ kick Otabek down from his rightful place in the podium.

Going home with a bronze wasn't what he had hoped for, but it would've been _something_.

His train of thought is cut short by the doors behind him opening, the noise of the party slipping out before they're closed again. He turns around to find Yuri walking out, dressed in a fine suit that looks ten times as expensive as his own.

"Shouldn't you be celebrating?" he asks Yuri, his eyes following him as he comes to stand right next to him, leaning on the railing.

"Hard to celebrate when you're the only one that's not allowed to drink."

It's the comment that makes Otabek realize Yuri's age. It's a weird time to realize it, he knows, when it's all everyone talks of. Yuri Plisetsky, only 15 years old and already two world records. He realizes, too, it's the only instance where his age matters to the skating world, only when it's directly linked to what he has achieved. Age is a fickle thing for skaters; a career that starts too early and ends entirely too soon. Everywhere else it becomes irrelevant. A life that revolves around the ice doesn't leave much time left to live what you're supposed to. Otabek knows that well. The circumstances that push to mature at an unnatural age.

"You know," it's Yuri that breaks the silence when it stretches for too long, "I've been trying hard to remember you but not much comes back."

He's not offended by that, or even surprised. He has never left too much of an impression, and he figures the memory of someone that struggled with basic moves wouldn't be too important for a boy that already carried as much weight on his shoulders as Yuri did at 10.

"Well, I couldn't forget you," he replies and doesn't tell him that he tried to, or that the green of his eyes chased him even through 5 years and always with his mother's voice at the back of his mind.

When Yuri smiles at him, that honest smile he saw back at the café for the first time, Otabek tells himself it's the champagne that makes his chest feel warm.

+

It's Marseille after that. Nagoya the year after. Vancouver and all the assignments in between.

He gets better. The losses become fewer and less shameful. Three years since and he continues to gravitate towards Yuri. It's only normal, he knows. By now they've shared a podium more times than not, and it doesn't remind him of his mother's words the way they seem to be pulled towards each other constantly.

It's been three years and everything and nothing has changed. Yuri's just as determined, his presence just as commanding, but now when Otabek finds himself thinking about his eyes it's with the bitter feeling that skype just doesn't do justice to the green of it.

It's Pyeongchang where it changes. A gold Olympic medal and your country's hymn will do that to you. Yuri's just one step below him, and he knows when he stares at him that the proud look in his eyes is nothing if not genuine. It makes Otabek's chest tighten with something entirely new. Bright and overwhelming and like the thing he had been trying so hard to fight back.

The celebration is different from what he grew used to. Louder and expensive and _big_. The six finalists of a gpf seem like nothing compared to an Olympic event, and he wants an out now more than ever, away from all the people he doesn't even recognize without their team jackets to identify them.

This time when a flute of champagne is pushed into his hand he takes it gladly, Yuri's smile incentive enough.

"Let's go outside," he tells him and Otabek can't think of a reason to deny him.

The garden is big and beautiful, the bushes perfectly trimmed, but despite its extension it still takes them a while to find a place for themselves.

"You were close to missing your landing on that Salchow, you know?" Yuri tells him when they find a bench to sit on. His tone isn't reproaching or even teasing, just plain honest. "But you recovered well. I don't think many people noticed. It was beautiful."

Otabek looks at him then. Praise doesn't come easy to Yuri, especially when he's not the one that goes home with a gold. He expected more disappointment, even anger. The kind of opportunity that most of them only get to experience once, at the prime of their career, and leaving with a silver is no one's plan. Instead, all he finds in Yuri's eyes is an open kind of honesty he hadn't seen before.

"You were, too," he replies, seeking to repay him the same way. "Beautiful, I mean. You always are."

He's never been good with words, not like his mother was. What he has is not prose and poetry or anything fine and beautiful. He always thought she had been too hopeful, that she loved too hard and never thought about the fall or that the world always seemed to prove exactly the opposite of what she believed.

Still, when Yuri leans closer he meets him halfway there. He kisses him soft but like the only way he knows to express what he feels. His lips are soft and the kiss is sweet, and when Otabek thinks of all those years, all that pulling and pushing and like untying a knot with closed eyes, he thinks his mother might've been right after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hozier's Better love
> 
> Please be kind to me! Follow me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/kyIoamidala)


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